The Number is Six

The Number is Six October 3, 2015

Mark Berman:

During his visit to the United States last week, Pope Francis used an address before Congress — one of the most high-profile platforms from which the pope could speak to this country and its leaders — to call for an end to the death penalty. In the two weeks following the pope’s remarks, five states plan to execute six death-row inmates, a burst of lethal activity the country has not seen in more than two years.

The executions scheduled over the next nine days seem to offer a microcosm of the death penalty as it currently exists in the United States. These cases touch on a wide range of the issues that surround capital punishment, including lethal injection drugs, mental health and possible racial biases. They are also a reminder that while executions are occurring less frequently than they have in two decades and do not take place in much of the country, a handful of states remain bastions of the death penalty….

If all of the executions are carried out as scheduled, it will mark the most active period of capital punishment in the United States since June 2013. Over a two-week span that month, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma combined to execute five inmates.

The United States executes so few inmates these days that it is rare for the dates to pile up like this. There are exceptions, of course: Last year, after nearly two months without any executions, three lethal injections were carried out in three states during a single 24-hour span.

But most states have, through choice or circumstance, not been active participants in the country’s capital punishment system. While 19 states have abolished the death penalty (a number that includes Nebraska, though that repeal may be on hold until it appears on a ballot next year), several more retain the death penalty without ever using it.


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